The growth in computer applications that require heavy data traffic and the increasing availability of high-speed transmission lines and intelligent communication switches create a need for data communication networks able to manage a huge amount of data at high rates. Complex software that addresses high-performance requirements of data networks is used to manage communications between a CPU and network devices.
To perform effective diagnostics of a network device, it is necessary to obtain a clear picture of interactions between a CPU and various elements of the network device. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system that enables a user to monitor CPU's access to various registers of a network device. To reduce CPU and system bus utilization, it would be desirable to monitor CPU's access using hardware resources of a network device.